Among the things we did this past weekend, we watched, listened, and read about the multiple disasters going on in Japan over the last several days. To say things in Japan are hellish right now is an understatement of massive proportions. It began with one of the top five earthquakes ever recorded by the USGS, followed by multiple nuclear power disasters, and as some kind of cruel cosmic cherry on top, a volcanic explosion in Southern Japan.
Our hearts go out to the people there, and we recommend that if you haven't done something to help those poor folks, that you chip in now, at somewhere like the Japanese Red Cross or another aid organization.
With all of those horrors happening in Japan, you might think we'd focus our commentary today on nuclear power, or the folly of man trying stop Mother Nature.
We'll leave that for tomorrow.
Today, we wanted to point out a difference we'd noticed in the short transition between the middle and end of last week, surrounding the media coverage of so-called major events.
In case you missed the links we provided last week, there were a couple of personnel turnovers at NPR of high-level NPR staff members after a hidden camera video and editing hack job was released last week. This video was obtained by a convicted criminal, who is also a far-right wing propaganda blogger. For at least a couple of days, it was a hard story to miss, as many of our colleagues in the media fell over themselves to cover a story we felt wasn't that significant.
Some in the media covered the NPR story as though it were almost as important as the disasters in Japan. While the coverage level wasn't exactly equal, it was too often disappointingly close at some media outlets we monitor.
That, in a nutshell, is the problem.
The first thing that ANY legitimate media - and especially NEWS media - should have done when the partisans on the right first began pushing the NPR scandal story as major news was look to what the source of the video was. That it came from a young extremist right wing activist, already convicted for an attack on a Senator's office, should have raised red flags. That this guy also has been caught attempting to commit sexually oriented blackmail on a national news reporter in order to fabricate another ideologically driven media frenzy, should have set off red lights and sirens in every legitimate newsroom.
Even with all the evidence damning the creator of the video, a respectable editor would have looked over the raw video footage to see if the activist's claims were true. Shockingly, this time the activist made the raw footage available - and even right wing sources, upon seeing the footage have admitted there was no real disaster or crime committed by NPR's now-former executives.
It is sad - and stupid - that two NPR execs felt they had to dump their own careers due to the highly biased coverage engineered by right-wing propagandists. The facts prove there was no need for NPR or its leadership to hang themselves out to dry - or worse.
There was also no need for other, more legitimate media outlets to give as much coverage to the NPR non-event as they did. As the very real and very sad events in Japan sadly continue to prove, there are plenty of disasters that occur every day that deserve far more media scrutiny than an executive or two at NPR shooting off his/her mouth in private.
That some media organizations have given nearly equal time to both the NPR tape and the events in Japan - while nearly ignoring many other substantive stories - is proof that at least one of the real disasters going on right now is the state of the "news" media itself.
